BAKERS AND APPLEQUISTS: 1920--1934

Frank and Margaret Baker, and their large extended family, form a colorful chapter in the history of the home. The Bakers immigrated to America from England in 1910 with their only child, Catherine, who was about eight years old at the time. Mrs. Baker originally came from Wales, and Catherine was born there. Mr. Baker was a teamster, meaning that he kept several teams of horses which he used to dig basements. Three teams of horses lived in the two-story barn behind our home, and the fourth stabled elsewhere. The horses grazed in Oats’s Pasture between the railroad bridge and the cemetery during the summer, and hauled coal during the winter. According to Mr. Applequist, whom I interviewed, coal sold for $1.50 a ton during the 1930’s, and it was weighed at a small scale-house which still stands today at the corner of Lincoln and Evans. The original brick coal bins at the corner of Logan and Ashland were torn down only a few weeks ago.

The Bakers had a lively, crowded household. Catherine had a “shotgun” wedding shortly before her seventeenth birthday and married Cecil Hopkins, only 19; however, the marriage lasted only a year. Their child, Marion, was born around 1920, and was later adopted by Catherine’s second husband, Carl Applequist. Catherine and Carl had two sons, Eugene and Robert, and lived with her parents for many years. (My son, Joe, was thrilled to learn that Eugene was born in his bedroom--a 13-pound baby born at home in 1927!) Mr. Baker took in an abused teen-age girl, Olive Dano, who later married William Newland and continued living with the Baker’s. In addition, the Baker family made an agreement with the newly-constructed Bardwell Elementary School to take in children from the “sight-savers” class. These children, with severe visual impairments, came from neighboring communities, including Sugar Grove and Big Rock, to attend school at Bardwell. One girl, Catherine Schneider, stayed with the Baker family for many years.

The Applequists later moved to Sexton Street, and Carl Applequist died of a bad heart in 1942. During their time on Lincoln Avenue, the Applequist children loved going to the back alley where they could get free soda pop from Baumann's Bottling Company, which operated out of a shed at the back of 211 Bluff Street. The soda later became the Nehi which is still sold today, and the shed is still standing (though just barely!)